Desktop publishing applications such as MICROSOFT® Publisher typically provide libraries of templates that can be used for creating content. These templates often contain pictures in positions and dimensions that are important to the overall design of the template. When users replace these pictures with their own content in a particular desktop publishing application, the placeholders (or frames) that the original pictures were in are changed to fit the aspect ratio of the new picture. Changing the aspect ratio of the original placeholder may cause undesired changes in the overall look of the document, since the design was originally intended for a picture with another aspect ratio. In other words, the user may now need to adjust the layout of the publication to accommodate the size and orientation of the new picture that was inserted.
For example, consider a template designed with a picture that is cropped to a horizontal rectangle and flanked by two text boxes. Suppose that the picture that a user wants to insert is oriented as a vertical rectangle. When the user inserts the new picture, the horizontal rectangle becomes a vertical one, leaving large amounts of unused space on both sides of the picture, and possibly interfering with the position of objects below the picture on the page. Alternatively, the vertical rectangle may be scaled so the long side of the new picture fits within the short side of the original picture. This would leave a very tiny vertical picture inside a wide placeholder with a lot of unused space.
A user could solve this problem by cropping and scaling the new picture to fit the exact dimensions of the original placeholder, but this can be a tedious and time consuming process.